"Where is Felix?" he asked, turning the conversation.
"Felix is, I believe, over in Lanzberg," she answered. "He has 'something to attend to.' He always has 'something to attend to' when I expect people," she added, bitterly. "It makes my position so uncommonly easy, Erwin! Can you account for his behavior? Would you, if you had once resolved to choose a wife of unequal birth, afterward be so passionately ashamed of her as Felix is?"
"How can you talk so foolishly, Linda?" Erwin interrupted the young wife, uneasily.
"Foolishly!" Linda shook her head with discouragement. "If you only saw him! Lately he made a scene before I could be permitted to accept the Deys' invitation; then, at the last moment, he had a headache, and expressed the wish that I should join Elsa and go without him."
"Strange idea to hang this monster in your pretty rococo nest!" cried Erwin, growing more and more embarrassed, and abruptly changing the conversation from Felix to the Rembrandt negress.
"The monster pleases me, I like contrasts--but to return to Felix----"
"You expect Pistasch and Sempaly, do you not?"
"They wished to come this evening--alas--I could renounce their society; to-day I should like greatly to confide in you, Erwin. You are the only person who is sorry for me."
There was a pause in the conversation of the two. Without, a murmur like a sigh of love sounds through the trees, and a few withered rose-leaves are blown into the room. Erwin's glance rests dreamily upon the young woman. She pleases him in somewhat the same manner as the Greuze head on the wall; no, differently--there is always something dead about a picture. A picture is either a recollection preserved in colors or a dream, and has the charm of a recollection, of a dream; while Linda has the charm of a foreboding, of a riddle, and above all things, the charm of life, of full young life.
Then a carriage approaches. "Pistasch and Sempaly," cries Erwin, looking out of the window and seizing his hat. "On Sunday, eh, Linda?" says he in a tone of farewell.